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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

For some odd reason this tune took some time to get into my hands, and still it's a somewhat slippery fish.

It's far from perfect, with some missed beats and one beautifully and massively flubbed chord: "If you fail, fail splendidly!".

Still, it was the only one of twenty takes where I didn't stop near the end to shake my fist at the Fates, but went on to the bitter end. To release some tension, I capped it off with some frenetically pressurized scat singing.

No problem at all 10 I made a few mistakes while learning the chords in tune #4 (some accidentals got lost) so I'm forced to revisit the tune which means there's little time for own "compos". Thanks Norm for you suggestions btw. I'm looking forward to #5 there's significantly less material this time.

Long time Dave student and fan who just stumbled across this site - nice to see Dave getting some props - I have gone through the JOI books a couple of times - I still start my nightly practise with a Jazz Hanon at two tempos, playing the tunes and picking a line out and transposing it through the keys. I am lucky to have found Dave - he is a great teacher and the Skype lessons are very convenient.

Welcome Ron.Congrats on having finished the JOI course.I finished three months ago and the JOI course has instilled good habits in me. I start my practice session with singing a master solo, a speed exercise and a voicings exercise.

Welcome RonL. I'm very much a novice here, working slowly, step by step, sharing some periodic progress reports with Cus, 10, knotty, Simou, and anyone else who clicks on this Box link.

Here's my Lesson 10 Blues, everybody. The first two versions are me fighting with a metronome set at 93. I can't quite tell who won, but I think the 'nome was yelling at me to "Pick up the slack!" The last two versions are me playing and singing with a swing rhythm track. So here's something that's so....

Woohoo Norm ! You learnt this so fast and it was very enjoyable to listen to.You probably already know this but on your 1st version, the tendency was to rush the triplets, which is the trap most people fall into.

Thanks 10 and Cus for you kind feedback. You realize, of course, it only encourages me. I may wind up posting each and every JOI tune I take a stab at playing.

But that might be, Cus, why you set up this PW spot in the first place: So people like me may play in the virtual reality of cyberspace to people like you, seasoned JOIers.

Also, thanks for the tip. I hadn't really noticed that the triplets were borne prematurely, just that they were weak and ill-formed. I'll bear that in mind as I tackle that single triplet in Buck Trends.

Now back to the dungeon....

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Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. -- Novalis

Singing: Cannonball's Autumn Leaves to get used to the melodic minor sound, as recommended by Chris

Scales: Half-whole dim. Currently I've only been confident using it over a dominant chord, although I hope to use it in the future over min 6.

And now for the exciting part: Chord Substitutions.I've bought Andy Laverne's Handbook of Chord Substitutions. I do one chapter per week and have covered Tritone subs, Changing the Character of a chord, and Using Functional Harmony to insert additional chords. He applies these concepts to different standards, and I'm working on "Solitude".

>> For some reason, I keep skipping into staccatoNo worries, Legato's a little hard to do. Keep it in mind as you say. The only notes you'd play staccato would be most quarter notes. But as a general rules, the 1/8th are legato. And the long notes at the end of a line are sustained also.

Cus, You sound pretty busy. I would keep at the old standards as well, strengthening the 8th note flow and slowly speeding it up. It's kind of a slow process but being able to blow on standards is very useful!

Myself, still working on basslines, it's starting to really come together and getting intoxicating. I also started on the door knob after Dave's last video. This is surprisingly difficult, but as usual, I think it will become easier after a short while.

I also just finished an arrangement of 'All of you'. It worked out good. Now I just need to polish playing it. And I just started a solo arrangement of Moment's notice. These arrangements are getting easier now.

My motivation for learning these exotic scales is to make my improv on ATTYA sound more interesting.One major difficulty is making my arrangement of the head easy enough to play at speed. Rather than using exotic sounds, I think I might go back to more straightforward techniques such as drop 2s.

You are very brave to start on the doorknob. But considering how quickly you mastered the walking bass, I'm confident you will get the hang of it quickly.

If you do record your arrangement of All of You, I'd be interested in hearing it. Moment's Notice has some pretty hard progressions.

Toooo beautiful Knotty ! I can't believe you arrange such complex stuff so quickly. I loved all of it especially the doorknob and the tritone subs.Thanks for the pdf too. Maybe you should publish a book of all your arrangements ?!I can learn so much from this.

My own update: Recently discovered I'm just too busy with other things and I've got to give joi a rest for a while. My sightreading and classical playing are in dire need of remedial work and I suddenly have a huge influx of students I need to keep one step ahead of. Also, I get constant interruptions while playing, and while I'm generally quite good at coping with this, I just can't do improv when I'm expecting the phone to ring, or hubby to ask me a question, or worse yet, get some comment on my playing from the person he's on the phone to. I thought things would get better when the kids went back to school, but alas! Alak! They didn't.

That's about as good as it gets. I don't think I'm really landing well on those endings. But, more's the point, as often as not, I get lost somewhere along the way, even with the changes in front of me. So, I will screw up more often than actually get through it. Which, given my patchy practice, is no wonder.

Joi-wise I'm at lesson 43, but I really need to balance these with some classical things. I notice, in classical, if my left hand is asked to actually move, it gives me this startled, 'what you mean, you want me to play this?' reaction.

On the up-side, I've noticed an improvement in sight-reading in just a few weeks.

This is really nice. It's really great that you are playing those Laverne arrangements. Is this part of a chapter using any particular technique, or is this just from a book with other arrangement?

Hi KnotsThank you for your nice comments and encouragement.Yeah I'm really pleased I'm using Andy's Handbook of Chord Substitutions book, as my long-term goal for this year was "to develop the skills required for arrangements".There are 16 chapters, I've only done 3.

At the end of the book, are 12 songs, each of which Andy provides:

1. A mild substitution arrangement e.g. the "Solitude" one I played.In this are the easier arrangement techniques e.g. tritone subs, changing the quality of chords, inserting additional chords using functional harmony.

2. A radical substitution arrangement. I call this "wild substitutions".I will not be able to understand Andy's Solitude arrangement for another year, but it is even more beautiful than the one I played.

So no, each song does not concentrate on one particular technique.

BTW, if you do decide to record your Lady Bird improv, I look forward to hearing it.